CEN11FA007 · Piper PA-32R-300
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Naperville, IL to Allegheny County Airport (AGC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11FA007
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32R-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N3402Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Naperville, ILTo Allegheny County Airport (AGC), Pittsburgh, PA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Takeoff
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During takeoff, the pilot rotated the airplane beyond the airplane's takeoff ground roll distance and at a speed near the airplane’s stall speed. A witness saw the airplane climb with a nose-up pitch of about 20 degrees. Although the airplane had experienced a partial loss of engine power, as reported by the pilot, it was still able to climb while in a high pitch attitude and corresponding high drag attitude, which is indicative that the airplane had excess horsepower to climb and sustain flight at higher airspeeds and lower angles of attack. However, the pilot continued to attempt to climb rather than to abort the takeoff, exceeded the necessary power requirements, and was unable to sustain the climb; the airplane impacted a building. Postaccident examination of the airplane’s engine revealed a detached fuel servo air inlet coupling that would have perturbed or restricted airflow to the fuel servo, which resulted in the reduced engine power. The examination also revealed a preexisting hole in an exhaust pipe near the fuel servo that would have allowed hot exhaust gases to flow into the fuel servo air inlet, which would also result in reduced engine power. The airplane had undergone an annual inspection performed by the airplane’s owner and two mechanics with inspection authorizations 3 flight hours before the accident flight; the inspection should have identified the detached coupling and the hole in the exhaust pipe.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to abort the takeoff when he realized the airplane was not attaining sufficient takeoff and climb performance. Contributing to the accident was the airplane’s partial loss of engine power due to an obstruction of the fuel servo air inlet by the intake duct coupling and ingestion of exhaust gases from a preexisting hole in the exhaust pipe. Also contributing to the accident was the improper annual inspection of the airplane by the owner and two mechanics.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11FA007
- Event ID
- 20101006X41012
- Case number
- CEN11FA007
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c3adc0d6f4bcf45cd9202777eba7e413ed561c5ad607eaa4b4271e728b41066f; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:27:28.224Z.